Organic Groups

The idea of organic groups is that they can be born, grow and die without requiring the involvement of an administrator. More specifically, these are groups that are created by users and then subsequently managed by the creators of those groups by themselves (and also possibly other group leaders that they choose to add as well).

The concept of organic groups is partly possible since Tiki4 as an improvement to the Group features (see the Workspaces Roadmap). In Tiki 14 there was a pre-release version of an Organic Group Addon that is currently available as a proof of concept, but it was realized that in order to do Organic Groups in a manageable and scalable way, Tiki would need a concept of Roles, which once the work on that is complete - the Organic Groups work will continue.

If you are a developer, see also the information on the dev site: Organic Groups

Related:

Functionality since Tiki 14

There is an Organic Groups Addon Proof of Concept that was developed as an example of how addons can be used to deploy organic groups functionality. This addon essentially uses the functionality that was already present in Tiki but simplifies the configuration process by packaging all the profiles and data channels that is needed to setup a typical organic group setup.

However, it was soon discovered that there would be a need to enhance the core capabilities within Tiki to have the concept of Roles before doing Organic Groups, otherwise it would be difficult to manage a large number of groups that have already been created in the longer run. The development of that Addon will continue after the development work for Roles is complete.

Functionality existing since Tiki 4 up to Tiki 13

each group has an owner and a moderator who can ban or remove users from the group.

closed groups can exist which are accessible by invite or application only

1.1.1. Issues

if tracker linked to a group, subscribe from Plugin SUBSCRIBEGROUP should go to insert tracker item: link to Bug/RFE

1.1.2. Community features related to organic groups.

shoutbox specific for group.

internal message to group.

group activity statistics.

invite to group by email.

email (newsletter) to group.

1.1.3. Group Security details

All groups have 1 “owner” and >1 “moderators”
owners can:

transfer owner to other moderator

create/remove moderators

disband group with “remove” or “make public” option for group objects.

Moderators can:

add or remove objects from group

assing view or edit permissions to members.

invite, approve and remove members.

1.1.4. To setup an Organic Group

1. Go to Admin>Admin Home>Profiles. Click on the “Advanced” tab. Create the data channel here. There are four parts to completing the data channel. For more information, go to the Data Channel page. In the example below, the Data Channel is called “test”.

2. The next step is to create two wiki pages. One page will contain the YAML, the other page will contain the Data Channel. For now, just create the blank pages. Let’s call them “Groups” for the YAML and “Data Channel”.

More detailed examples of the code can be found on the Permission Mangement page in the profiles section.

Save this page.

4. Edit the “Data Channel” page. Insert the following:

{DATACHANNEL(channel=test)}
groupname, Name your Group
groupdesc, Describe your Group
{DATACHANNEL}

The two lines between the data channel represent the fields that will be filled out by users to create the groups. Obviously, the description can be eliminated if you don’t want to include that. If so, it should probably also be eliminated from step two.

Again, save once this is complete.

5. Once this is all complete, you will want to go to the “Data Channel” wiki page. You’ll have two boxes to complete for the name and the description. Hit the go button and your groups should be completed.